British Newspaper Archive

What is it?

The British Newspaper Archive website gives access to over 6 million fully searchable pages, featuring more than 200 newspaper titles from every part of the UK and Ireland. A further 2 million pages will be added over the first two years of the project, with 8,000 new pages every day.

These newspapers – which mainly date from the 19th century, but which include runs dating back to the first half of the 18th century – cover every aspect of local, regional and national news.

This exciting new resource is published and managed by brightsolid, in collaboration with the British Library.

How do I use it?

Full text searching is available. You can refine your search to focus on:

Family notices – birth, marriage and death notices; related announcements such as engagements, anniversaries, in memoriam, birthdays and congratulations

Obituaries – a wealth of contemporary information on the lives of notable individuals and ancestors

News articles – national events, along with issues of local and regional importance – the first draft of history and a window into the world of the past

What sort of stories can I find?

Exhaustive coverage of crime and punishment – from infamous murder trials to stories of men, women and children transported to Australia for minor thefts

Eyewitness accounts of social transformation – reports, commentary and letters to the editor on topics ranging from the railway mania of the mid-19th century to the expansion of the temperance movement

Illustrations and advertisements – the aspirations and anxieties of the time laid bare - everything from the latest fashion to miracle cures for baldness and venereal disease

Alongside first-hand accounts of events such as the wedding of Victoria and Albert and the Charge of the Light Brigade, these newspapers also provide countless vivid details of how our ancestors lived and died

What does it cost?

The British Newspaper Archive is free to search. To view the content in a newspaper page image, there is a choice of time-limited PPV (Pay Per View) or subscription packages.

There are two PPV options available: the £6.95 package that lasts for 48 hours and provides 500 credits, and the £29.95 package that lasts for 30 days and provides 3000 credits. The subscription package is priced £79.95 for one year. Items downloaded within the credit packages are free to view for two months after expiry of the package.

The British Newspaper Archive can be used for free at the British Library’s Reading Rooms in St Pancras and Boston Spa.

Will more newspapers be added?

The British Newspaper Archive is the result of a 10-year partnership between the British Library and brightsolid. The project is expected to scan up to 40 million newspaper pages over the next 10 years.

To date the project has concentrated on out-of-copyright material pre-dating 1900; however brightsolid have already obtained permission from one publisher to digitise newspaper runs up to the mid 20th century.

The site will continue to grow as thousands of newly-scanned pages are uploaded daily.